Tag Archive: The North Corridor

Hi there! It’s been a crazy few weeks now, with a lot of stuff to catch up on for me. I’ve been so lucky to have attended 3 concerts this past month, and I thought I would share it all at once for you. (This post has been almost a week in the making already, so now I will just publish it to you).
The first one was with Chevelle, Disturbed and Avenged Sevenfold. It was just incredibly awesome. I tried to take some pictures and film a bit, but my phone is such a mess, that it was poor quality and the short videos I filmed on Snapchat were all ruined, so I have no footage what so ever of Disturbed and Chevelle, which is quite dissapointing. I enjoyed myself immensely though, and didn’t spend a lot of time trying to film or take pictures anyways, as I feel it is more important to enjoy the moment while it lasts, not look at it afterwards and wish you had payed more attention. I was so incredibly tired afterwards, after shouting and singing along, headbanging and raising my fists and making devil horns.
We entered the concert hall just as Chevelle was about to start, so we got to enjoy the entire sets of all the bands. Chevelle got the mood up really quick after standing in line freezing and bullied by people trying to get in front of us. They delivered a short, but well composed set to get the party started. I really wished they would have played “The Red”, though, as I really like that song and would have loved to hear it live. Anyways, they really delivered and got everyone in the right place for a night of metal.

There was quite a wait between bands, and I get why, because between the epic pyro show Disturbed displayed, and the huge cube floating above our heads with images and lights that Avenged Sevenfold had going on, not to mention the epic, ginormous space suit they had in the back of the stage floating around, I guess the technicians had A LOT to do to rig it up and down. David Draiman was unfortunately a little sick, so he held back a little singing some of the songs, and you could tell he was not at his best, but he still knocked it out of the park for me. He’s really dedicated to the job and his fans for going through with the concert. He still hit all the right notes on The Sound Of Silence, which was as magical as I imagined it would be, with people holding up their cell phones with lights on. A really beautiful moment. The thing with people holding their cell phones with lights in the air repeated itself as David asked people to do so only when he sung the words “the light” in the song The Light, which was also created some quite beautiful moments with a magical atmosphere. And, as I mentioned, the pyro show was incredible, and even though I stood a bit far back, to be able to see the stage and not be squished to pieces by the crowd, I could still feel the heat from the flames very well. I can’t imagine how Mike Wengren (the drummer) had it, sitting right in it all while the flames climbed the back line on Inside The Fire. And the rest of the band, for that matter, but they could at least move around. I loved the fact that David laughed demonically at the start and end of this song, as it appears on the recorded version. The band kicked ass with jumping and head banging and making a show of it all the time, and David appealed to the audience for help singing some of the songs, and encouraged us to raise our fists and devil horns in the sky. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of Disturbed at the concert, I only filmed a little bit and the footage was destroyed, but fortunately a friend of mine which I attended the concert with gave me permission to use one of her pictures.

Avenged Sevenfold was even better this time than the last, and I heard and saw them a lot better now than I did in 2013, when my friend and I stood a lot closer. Pretty much all we saw were people’s backs and the lights. This time I got to see quite a lot of what was happening on stage, and there was a catwalk the band came down to sing and play on many times. They opened the concert by putting on Rocket Man by Elton John, and Space Oddity by David Bowie in the background, before entering the stage and playing The Stage, with the music video showing in the background. I think that was a genius thing to do, considering their latest album is a science concept album.

At some point during the concert, there was a surge of people moving perfectly, so that only short people were aligned in a straight line from me to the end of the catwalk, so I could see M. Shadows and Synyster Gates standing there and doing their awesomeness. It was very satisfying, until Shadows yelled out “put your hands in the fucking air!”, and then my line of sight was gone. This time around they had better screens showing what was going on on stage, so that when my feet and back became tired from stretching so much and standing on my toes, I could just relax a bit and look at the screens. The crowd sang along to almost all the songs, both when Disturbed played and when A7X played. People even tried to sing to the instrumental version of Warmness On The Soul. The crowd was even louder than M. Shadows as we all went “Ooooh, it’s your fucking Nightmare!”. I love those kind of moments, where everyone knows exactly what to do and everybody is in sync. Another great moment of that kind was when we all chanted “Hail! Hail! Hail!” in Hail To The King. I had a great time and people were generally nice, except for a couple of duchebags and almost being dragged down from the mosh pit that started right next to us, which was no fun at all. My friends and I were all satisfied and tired when it was all over, and I can’t wait to the next time I get to see these bands live, ’cause they kick ass!

Here are some pictures I took from when Avenged Sevenfold were on stage:

I also borrowed a few pictures from my friend from the Avenged Sevenfold concert:

The next concert I attended was Kvelertak, which is a Norwegian black/heavy metal band (the band name means “stranglehold”). They are currently on tour with their new album Nattesferd (“night journey” directly translated). They were awesome as well, with one of the best light shows I have seen in my life. The concert was held at the student house where I work, so I was lucky enough to get a free ticket! The front man is notoriously known for stage diving, but strangely enough he didn’t do it this time, only the guitarist did, and I got a nice shot of him being held up by the crowd on his feet, continuing to play. It was an incredibly electric mood in the place, and I really had a great time at this concert as well, and could even enjoy myself a bit more, not being forced to stand in the middle of a crowd with nowhere to go and familiarity with the place. Also, there’s a difference between 15 000+ people and 500+ people. Kvelertak played amazingly well, and people had a good time, some people even crowd-surfed.

My pictures from Kvelertak:

The final concert I went to this month was quite another story. It was with the pop band Sweet Like Chili, which is fronted by two of my friends. It was a very intimate and moving concert, there being only about 20 people (excluding the band), but it would have been quite a different mood I think, if there had been any more people. I really enjoyed that concert too, but in a completely different way, as this was a sitting-concert, with mellow sounds and delicate, yet powerful voices. I also love the fact that they write their lyrics in English, which makes them more relatable, and it makes this band much more open to international audience. I hope you would check them out and give them a chance, even though I know my audience, and know that this blog hasn’t exactly been super-positive to pop in the past. I might just be a little biased, as I know these people from childhood, and want to support them as much as I can. But don’t write them off at once, I can recommend Pavement, Ghost, Don’t Tell, and What We Give Away (Cheap). Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures, I was just caught up in the moment, but I might see them again before long, and maybe I will remember to take pictures then and post them here.

Anyways, I had a blast at all these amazing concerts with all these amazingly great musicians, and it’s going to be very hard to top this year with something greater than I have experienced this past month.

“Like your face getting forced to the floorWhen either way, you’re way too close to it all”
(Face To The Floor – Chevelle)

“I’ll have you knowThat I’ve becomeIndestructibleDetermination that is incorruptible”
(Indestructible – Disturbed)

Hi there! Today it’s less than a week left till I’m going to Oslo again, to see Avenged Sevenfold live for the second time! This time, they will be joined by Disturbed and Chevelle! I’m really excited, and I think it will be great.
As some of you might remember, I went to see A7X in Oslo in November 2013, that time originally joined by Five Finger Death Punch and Device. Unfortunately for the fans, Device backed out of the concert because the son of David Draiman, vocalist of both Device and Disturbed, was born just a couple of months before the concert. However, we got to enjoy the Swedish talent of Avatar, which was (of course not as good as Device, but) a great replacement. The whole concert was amazing, and I hope and think this next one will be equally great.

In preparation of the concert coming up in less than a week (and a little late to the preparation, as I usually am), I have made a playlist on Spotify containing the entire discography of all three bands (of course, all that was available on Spotify, which is not all – among other things, the A7X album Diamonds in the Rough is not there) for me to listen to, which is close to 21 hours of playtime. I hope that by Thursday, I will have some clue of all the songs I could hear at the concert Friday. I haven’t listened as much to Chevelle before as I have to A7X or Disturbed, and I haven’t listened too much to the older albums of Disturbed either. I really hope this also can open my eyes to some new songs to listen to in the future as well.

Disturbed are still soaring on their success from their latest album “Immortalized”, released in 2015, while Chevelle and Avenged Sevenfold both released their latest albums, “The North Corridor” and “The Stage” respectively, in 2016.

So, to make this post more musical, and not all “news”, I wanted to add my current favorite song of all three bands:

Avenged Sevenfold – God Damn (The Stage)

Disturbed – The Light (Immortalized)

Chevelle – Got Burned (The North Corridor)

If any of my readers are going to the concert as well, or are going to a concert with these three bands in another country (or you just love these bands and want to listen to their music) you can check out my ready-made playlist here.